, and ms. o'grady and washington columnist kim stossel. you are stuck in washington having to talk to all the sources. and you have been working them this week, i know. is the mood as sour as it sounds? >> it is by the end of this week and here's why. republicans came out right after the election and said to the president, you want revenue, here. you want revenue on the wealthy? we will give it to you. let's do this via limbing tax deductions for the wealthy. the president instead of taking that, running it, ceiling a deal, has been out campaigning for tax hikes. and to cap it off, sent treasury secretary tim geithner down to congress this week with this absolutely outrageous proposal that's basically a compilation of everything the president wanted in his budget. it's beyond what he even campaigned for. and as a result i think most republicans wonder just how serious he is about doing this. they feel things are going backwards. >> that's the way it sounded to me, too. i talk to some senior republicans this week and they are increasingly of the belief that maybe the president wants to bac

were talking about, the negotiations in washingtons. the at some point, somebody, maybe the republicans have to speak up ab defend the real economy against the sort of policies they're talking about down there. >> they get wrapped up in the insider baseball and we're guilty of that, too, and playing to that and people out there. what they really want to know is the economy going to grow or not. if you're increasing taxes on dividend, you get less capital and dividends and then less growth for the economy and less revenue for the government. >> well, a lot of people worry about the many years that japan has been in a slow growth environment, but they've kept interest rates very low in japan, but the problem is, government is too big. that's why japan has not been able to start growing again. and this is the path that the u.s. is certainly on if we don't change that dynamic. >> paul: kim, is there any recognition about this in washington or is it all -- i mean, do you hear any of this discussion or do they really believe, certainly, the white house and the treasury, that tax rates like th

civil liberties union? >> a here in washington has been a major impediment and a lot of people believe that nobody should be treated involuntarily. well, that flies in the face of the fact that we treat people with active tuberculosis involuntarily when they won't take medicine. we also restrict people who have alzheimer's disease and don't know they're sick. so, we do this for other conditions, but we have a lot of trouble thinking through this clearly for people with severe mental illness. >> paul: you mentioned in your op-ed for us, the number of activity psychiatric beds has declined from more than half a million to fewer than 50,000. i guess this is part of that movement you're describing against incarcerating the mentally ill, but you're saying that that decline in those beds has endangered the american public? >> it has, because if you try to get somebody who needs hospitalization into a hospital today, it's virtually impossible. as one of my colleagues says, it's easier to get somebody into harvard than it is a mental hospital. we have only one out of the 20 beds that we had 50

in washington where tonight we're no closer to compromise on a deal to avoid that show called fiscal cliff. >> it was also warm in the nation's capital despite the chill between democrats and republicans. >> president obama dug in his heels insisting on tax increase or higher earners. >> and they both agree he that the other's proposals are ridiculous. >> just a sampling of the coverage this week as the media keep a watch on what's done or not to avert the fiscal cliff. >> jim shall the overriding theme in the media seems to be that president obama won the election and therefore should do what he wants and the media seems to forget na john boehner and everyone else won their elections as well and they're a co-equal branch of government. >> i think the media loves the story of president obama's comeback and the new york time describes him as disciplined and unyielding and focused on this and i think there are other media stories as well. the second media story or narrative. which one wants to grow by virtue of the tax increases and get new perspective from the mainstream media and the third

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